Timeouts Toward End of Games Hurt Scoring

HoopIdea is reimagining NBA basketball, and we kicked things off with a plea to speed up the end of close games. Timeouts, fouls, free throws, substitutions, video reviews and the like can turn the last two minutes of riveting NBA action into a 15-minute collection of dead ball time with short breaks for basketball.

The argument for those dead balls centers around the idea that coaches need to direct their players. As David Thorpe put it on Google+, “we need timeouts in this game, otherwise the games will be even more ragged than they sometimes are.” He expanded the point on the NBA Today podcast speaking for many coaches when he says coaches needed those dead balls to put their imprint on the game, and to raise the quality of play.

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